So Little!

After reading my post on Saturday, a friend asked if I had written it specifically for her.  She shared with me that she is going through a terrible situation in life and feels alone, bitter and angry.  My friend shared with me that she was losing her faith because she had done everything she felt she could do and asked, “Why won’t He help me?”

As I shared with you in that post, I too had begun to question and evaluate my relationship with the Lord wondering why He wasn’t answering my prayer.  I had evaluated every aspect of myself, my life and my relationship with Him wondering where I was falling short.  I had researched the reasons why the Lord doesn’t answer our prayers and learned the following reasons are why He doesn’t answer prayer: Sin, Unforgiveness, Lack of Persistence, Doubt, Wrong Motives, Not Praying According to God's Will, and Not Listening to Godly Counsel. http://www.lovesark.net/prayer/unansweredprayer.html   I’ve also learned that just because a prayer has not yet been answered does not mean it will not be answered.  We have to listen to Him when He says, “Be still and know that I am God.”

The day I wrote the blog post that triggered the conversation between my friend and I, I too was feeling abandoned and confused.  I was faced with having to say “good-bye” to my husband again because the decision had been made for him to return to Afghanistan to work in order to provide for our family.  I had prayed for a different outcome.  When the prayer seemed to go unanswered I began to evaluate every aspect of my life and my relationship with the Lord asking why He wasn’t answering my prayer.  After such close examination I determined that it simply had to be the Lord’s will for my husband to go back to Afghanistan.  As much as the thoughts of him going back broke my heart I had resigned myself to accept it as the Lord’s will.  The next day, Sunday I prayed, “Lord this is so hard for me.  I feel like I’m dying inside.  Having to live my life with him so far away and knowing that he is in such danger seems to be more than I take again.  I had hoped and prayed these days were behind us.  Lord I know you love me and your will for us is to give us hope and a future.  Lord, give us strength to get through this.  Please Lord, watch over him, protect him and bring him home safely to us. As hard as this is Lord, Your will be done.” 

Later that afternoon my husband was offered a job stateside.  The person who offered my husband the job had not offered it sooner because they thought my husband may have felt the position was beneath him and it was offered as a last resort to keep him from having to go back.  The truth is my husband would have taken a job doing anything in order to be able to stay at home with his family.  This person who thought what they were offering was so little truly has no concept of what a blessing that offer was to us. When my friend that I had had the referenced conversation with heard the news, she said she was so happy for us and that this news had given her renewed hope. Not only had this person been a blessing to us but had also through their actions given someone they don’t know renewed hope.

Sometimes the Lord will wait to answer our prayers in order to test our faith.  Sometimes He wants to know that we are truly seeking His will, His plan and His purpose for our lives regardless of how much it may not coincide with our wants.  I believe this was my test.  We never know who the Lord has placed in our lives to reach out and offer a helping hand at what may seem like the last minute.  If you can do something to help someone, even if it seems to be so little, don’t hold back.  What may seem so little to you may make a world of difference in someone’s life.  God Bless!